Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast
When Hamas, a violent, oppressive, antisemitic, theocratic organization with the stated mission of destroying Israel, intentionally murdered more than 1,400 people—mostly innocent civilians, in addition to many foreign nationals—and took a few hundred hostage, including babies and the elderly, there was only one rational response to this particular incident. Hamas is a reprehensible terrorist group, targeting innocent civilians is always wrong, and Hamas is not synonymous with innocent Palestinian civilians.
Regardless of where you fall on the Israel–Palestine conflict (and I have complicated thoughts on it myself), this should have been an easy position to take. Indeed, many on the left did express solidarity with the Palestinian people by calling for an end to the more than half-century long occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip—while also expressing horror at Hamas’ wanton cruelty, sympathy for the survivors and victims’ families, and rejecting the notion that this was some kind of great military victory on the road to a “free Palestine.”
However, in a true “mask off” moment, much of the far-left inexplicably chose to explicitly (and without reservation) side with the terrorists. Morality aside, this is a profoundly incompetent, self-serving, narcissistic strategy that will probably set back many left-wing policy goals for the foreseeable future—including the cause for Palestinian self-determination.